Woven crop materials may be used in agriculture to shelter crops or animals from exposure to adverse environmental conditions, such as sun, wind or rain, or to provide protection from animals, such as birds or insects, that may damage a crop. They are also used as ground cover materials for weed control or to create more favourable environmental conditions for the growth and development of a plant or fruit on a plant. For example, a woven crop protection material may be used to increase reflected light.
In use, such woven materials are fixed and held in place, often by attaching a fixing means to a belt of woven material attached along the edge of the main body of material. Such belts are of higher tear resistance than the main body of the material and may include grommets. While such reinforced regions may be strong, they may also be heavy in weight and materials use, and even more so if grommets are used too.
An alternative example of a method of fixing and holding woven materials in place uses a length of wire which has been threaded along and inside the length of a hem on a lateral edge of the material. Such a method is labour intensive on installation; the wire needs to be placed in the fabric as it is being sown.
Crop protection materials may also be knitted materials. Knitted materials may be used for purposes similar to woven materials, although due to the apertures inherently present in a knitted structure (i.e. the holes in a knit pattern) they are more suited to use as, for example, wind break or wind screen materials, that have a lower coverage, than use as rain exclusion materials or materials that require a high coverage. Knitted crop protection materials may be provided with knitted eyelets, made during the knitting process, along their edge regions through which fixing means (such as wire clips) may be attached, so that the materials may be held in place. Alternatively, they may be provided without eyelets and in such cases fixing means (such as wire clips) may be passed through an edge region of the material itself. The knit structure at the edge of the material may be one of greater tear resistance, or greater tear resistance around any eyelets knitted into the material, to assist in maintaining the tear resistance of the edge region at the locations where fixing means are attached. As mentioned above, in general, knitted materials are not well suited for purposes such as rain exclusion because of the larger apertures inherently in a knit structure which allow the passage of rain. Knitted materials are also expensive to gain the high coverage possible from woven materials. For a similar reason, knit structures may not be suitable as shade materials that require a high degree of sun shading, as to gain a high coverage requires a high level of material which adds to the cost and weight of the material.
It is an object of the present invention to provide improved crop materials, or at least to provide the public with a useful choice.